…. A Filing Cabinet!
I know. Younger me would be absolutely horrified at what now passes as excitement in my life, but honestly, I’m obsessed with our new pre-loved filing cabinet and the level of organisation that this brings into our lives.
There are some things in our new house that my partner has really wanted (our banquet length dining room table and all the car stuff 😁) and there are some things that I really wanted and this filing cabinet is very much a me thing as I hate feeling disorganised and moving house has meant that we have more paperwork than we’ve ever had.
In our old house, we had a little box file where we kept everything we needed to keep but it was overflowing and pretty heavy to drag out of the cupboard when we needed to get something out of it so we needed a different solution and I really wanted a small filing cabinet to pop in the corner of the room we’re using as my office but when we were looking for one, we spotted a pre-loved one in a local charity shop.
It was an absolute bargain for £20, especially as it came filled with loads of foolscap files which meant it was ready for me to start organising as soon as we got it home. I don’t even think I could have bought the files alone for much less than that, never mind the cabinet itself which was in great condition.
I like that it’s not one of those ugly metal ones too. 🗄
Most of the filing cabinets that I was looking at online that were in our budget were those industrial looking metal ones but this one is a nice wooden one which is actually a really good quality.
In fact, it’s such good quality and so heavy that we decided that it was going to live downstairs rather than try and kill ourselves to move it up to the office which is fantastic as I have now used the space set aside for that for some pretty shelves which I’m having so much fun styling with plants, photos and other little bits and bobs.
It’s new home is in our big cupboard under the stairs which we call our Harry Potter cupboard because honestly, you could probably live in there. It’s 3 metres long and just over a metre wide so it’s a big space, although it definitely needs plastering and painting at some point.
It has really sturdy shelves all the way around it and when we first moved in, it quickly became one of those spaces where everything got dumped. Coats, shoes, bags, parcels waiting to go out, random bits we didn’t know what to do with… you know the kind of cupboard I mean.
It’s not a priority to give it a full makeover right now but over the last week or so we’ve had a proper tidy up in there and decided to dedicate one end of the cupboard to organisation rather than chaos so that’s where the filing cabinet now lives and honestly, it feels weirdly grown up having an actual place for paperwork instead of shoving it into kitchen drawers and hoping for the best.
At the moment, we’re only really using the top drawer properly for files and documents which is all we ever needed really – something bigger than the box file we were using previously but not full on office sized storage. This is definitely more on the side of full on office sized storage but it was so cheap including all the files that that it genuinely worked out cheaper than buying a smaller one.
The second drawer has already become our “deal with later” drawer, which is actually part of a system we’ve used for as long as we’ve lived together and it works surprisingly well for us. We keep a box in there where we throw receipts, letters, paperwork and anything else that needs sorting but not immediately. Then once a month, we sit down, go through it all, file what needs keeping and shred or recycle the things we no longer need.
It’s one of those tiny habits that makes life feel so much less chaotic because there’s always somewhere for paperwork to go rather than it building up in little piles all over the house.
I also just love the fact that it’s second-hand. Apart from the money-saving side of things, older office furniture is often so much sturdier than newer flat pack versions and this thing is absolutely solid. Similar ones new are upwards of £150 from what I can see so we definitely got a bargain.
Our new house might still be a work in progress, but little things like this genuinely make me feel more settled here. There’s something oddly comforting about slowly finding systems that work and creating proper homes for things rather than constantly feeling like you’re still half unpacked.
Although I am very aware of the fact that I’m now the sort of person who gets genuinely excited over a filing cabinet. Life comes at you fast. 😂
I’d love you follow me on Twitterand it would be amazing to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉
Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later.
Discover more from The Diary of a Frugal Family
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Talk to me...